A secure two-party bartering protocol using privacy-preserving interval operations

Bartering plays a significant role in today's global economy-both between individuals as well as in B2B settings. However, aside from lacking automation, today's bartering solutions and supporting platforms typically neglect the privacy needs of their users. In this paper, we present a novel two-party protocol which addresses these shortcomings. The new protocol automatically determines whether the desired and offered commodities and quantities overlap in such a way that both parties are willing to barter. Throughout the protocol, the commodities and quantities as specified by the parties are kept private. We show that the protocol is privacy-preserving in the semi-honest model. As main building blocks, the new bartering protocol uses a novel privacy-preserving protocol for selecting a random subinterval out of the overlap of two intervals as well as a newly-developed secure protocol for input-symmetric strong conditional oblivious transfer.